How do you manage it all? A plea for help.

[LiliaLilac]

I feel like I'm so incompetent at managing my life and drowning in it all, and I want to know how you all do it.

I work full time hours over four days, which works out as 8am until 6pm Tuesday - Friday. I have two children aged 5 and 2. The five year old is at school and the 2 year old is either at nursery or grandparents for childcare. Drop offs are a nightmare as between my husband and I (and our one car) we have to juggle two school / childcare runs and our commutes. We usually have to leave the house before 7am and aren't often back before 7pm.

I am an accountant, my job is hugely demanding, I very often have to log back on late in the evening to work. My employer is relatively understanding / flexible, but I have to meet very demanding targets. The work is never done and hangs over me.

I have an elderly cat and an elderly dog, both of whom need daily medicine.

My house is a disaster. I spend every Saturday trying to get on top of it and yet every week there are piles of laundry, piles of dishes, mountains of "stuff", nothing ever feels really clean or sorted. It's an old wreck of a house, a good bones sort but needs so much work and there is no money to do it. There is nowhere to put drying laundry or the ironing pile, or to store toys and the kids' equipment etc. The garden is a huge, rambling mess with weeds taller than my head. I cry regularly at how overwhelming the cleaning and tidying feels. I can't pay to outsource it because we are aggressively saving for renovations. I manage a corner and feel like I'm fiddling while Rome burns.

The children are absolutely lovely but it's the usual carousel of appointments, activities, meals and mess. The 2yo still regularly wakes in the night.

I can't remember the last time I felt I could come downstairs and read a book once they're in bed. I can't remember who I used to be. I think I was fun. I now think I'm just grey and overwhelmed all the time.

I am being assessed for ADHD on the recommendation of my GP, but I don't know if I have it or if I'm just struggling.

How do others do it? How do people have tidy homes and organised schedules and nice calm, peaceful, regulated lives? Why am I so utterly useless?

I sympathise as I also have a huge old house with neverending stuff to do.

Could you get a cleaner and/or gardener? Perhaps just a one-off to get things in order so you have less to do on a regular basis.

Could you get help with ironing or get stuff dry cleaned so you don't have to iron?

I find doing tasks as you go along is much more manageable, rather than letting things build up and feeling overwhelmed. Like if you see a job that needs doing (that takes less than 5 minutes), do it now rather than leaving it for later.

It sounds like you have a lot on your plate and you don't want to be spending every weekend doing housework!

Also, if you haven't got one already, a heated airer (Lakeland does a good one) is a must-have. If you get a cover, it dries things quickly and looks tidy.

I reduced my hours to 80% despite others suggesting compressed hours, as i just couldn't deal with 4 such long days. Sorry, not that helpful! In reality the workload is still full time but I'm not getting paid for that so some things just don't get done now and nobody can really complain.

Other suggestions which may not be helpful...

• cycling/ walking drop off or pick up for the one who doesn't have the car. E.g. using a kiddie bike seat, or the 5 year old on their own bike.
• lower your standards (e.g. I've not ironed my whole adult life and nothing negative has resulted)
• tidy as much as you can as you go along, and enlist children to do the same so they grow up a little tidier (i know, easier said than done)
• batch cooking and freezing portions to make tea time simpler.
• robot Hoover?
• if you can manage a few days of without children, use it to sort shit out... throw away, sort, find the right places for things etc
• garden, can you get a strimmer and just keep it a bit under control? No need to worry about it too much but best if you can strim/ mow to make it useable.
• if you are going upstairs take something with you that needs to go upstairs and put it away, likewise downstairs, through the room etc.
• minimise after school activities.

The first thing that stands out a mile from your post to me is the word 'I'.

'I have an elderly cat and an elderly dog'
'I spend every Saturday trying to get on top of it'
'I can't pay to outsource it'
'I manage a corner'
'Why am I so utterly useless?'

Can you see where I'm going with this? You are carrying the entire mental load as well as (it appears) almost all of the physical one, and then blaming yourself for feeling like you are a failure.

What's your husband doing in all of this? How come the mental load is entirely yours? How much in the way of chores and childcare does he take off your hands? How much of it do you have to 'ask' him to do?

All of this should be a joint problem. It should be 'We' not 'I'.

Interesting, isn't it, that the other posters who have already replied have come up with lots of suggestions about how the OP can do things differently.

None of those suggestions include the DH. Why is that? 😕

Divide your tasks into those that matter (cooking, loo cleaning, bathing children etc) and those that don't (cleaning spare bedrooms, weeding the paths, ironing stuff that's just being put away).

Do the former. Ignore the latter until it becomes actually necessary.

Dust is not your enemy.

Sorry - I meant to add a paragraph about my husband and forgot, but he is genuinely brilliant. He does more than me in general with the house and is a totally equal parent. He is a very calm and sanguine person and doesn't get upset about it in the way that I do, but he's definitely doing his fair share.

Why so passive aggressive? We've merely responded to the OPs question but you are reading further into it than justified.

I would gently suggest that now is not the season for “aggressively saving” for renovations. Put some of this money towards not having a nervous breakdown. The kids and the job are probably non-negotiable. So outsource some domestic tasks. Laundry service? Invest in a skip? A cleaner or robot hoover? If a second car or an e-bike would make the drop offs and commute less stressful, do it. Make sure DH pulls his weight - you are not on maternity now. If he takes the kids out on Saturday morning you could have a hour of focused household tasks and a hour of sitting and staring at a wall. Then the other way around on Sunday morning. You also may find that you are not much worse off financially if you can reduce your hours. Even a half day a fortnight would give you a breather? But mostly save a bit less and redeploy the funds - reno will be easier when the kids are a bit older anyway, and you have a better chance of being alive to enjoy the result.

Do you all need to be out so early and back so late?

I think you are expecting too much of yourself tbh. Working full time hours in a demanding job with 2 young children is a lot. On top of this your house is difficult to run and you can’t afford to pay for help. I don’t think there are any easy solutions here. I’d be tempted to sell the house and buy one that is fully done up and easy to live in. Buy in help instead of saving for renovations. Either that or accept that you will be muddling/struggling along for years to come
and make peace with this.

If you possibly can, stop work when you leave work, don't log on in the evening. If the work is never done, then does it really matter if a bit more of it doesn't get done? You can only do what you can do.

I worked four days a week when my kids were little, as did my husband and I can honestly say my house was a shit tip when the kids were little. We kept on top of the kitchen and the toilets were clean, and the sheets and towels were changed fortnightly but everywhere else was lucky if it got dusted/hoovered/mopped once a month unless we did a mad clean before visitors came. We had paint sample squares on our living room walls for over a decade. The world did not end, friends and family still loved us (though I did have a row with my mother in law about it).

Now we are older and earn more, the kids are adults and our house is tidy and clean because we can afford a cleaner!

Let go of the guilt, do the essentials, let everything else go for a bit. If you get a bit of energy or cash, sort one thing out. You will get there! But don't kill yourself trying.

Save a little less aggressively to help keep on top of things day to day.

• get a cleaner for 3 hours a week - circa £50
• get a gardener to get the garden under control - circa £300 at the start to get things under control, then maybe £100 a month maintenance if you need it
• if washing builds up that much can you do a load or two midweek too, and do you have a dryer? It not, get one - circa £450, one off cost

You'll keep the cleaner and you might find that you only need a gardener once a month, just over summer.

Out of interest how much are you saving per month for renovations?

You could have a set amount of jobs you do during the week then leave others to weekend.
when mine were that young I’d
do a load of washing a day (put away as and when I remembered)
cleaned the bathroom as they were in the bath
one of us would do the kitchen straight after tea

How do you spend your day off? I used to dedicate an hour to jobs before we went out anywhere and I’d give my toddler a task to keep them busy then I’d use the rest of the day to enjoy being off with my child and try not to think about work or the house

We would have a weekend day for going out and trying to relax together whilst they played then used another weekend day to clean and tidy then get out for a trip to the park

I’ve only read your OP and I will say that you need a cleaner if you’re working FT in a professional, demanding role and have young DC. I have been there.

Any scope for promotion or pay rise?

I really feel for you. You are in the trenches with two small children, and working compressed hours is exhausting. In my experience, you can't do it all - work FT, do a house renovation, keep on top of a big garden, do all the housework yourselves, and have the energy to be present for the kids.

My advice would be either:

• as @Princessfluffy suggests, downsize to a smaller, more manageable house
• or accept that now is not the time to be saving for or doing renovations, and just live in the house as it is until the kids are at secondary school.

I know this is a maddening thing to say, but the years do go by so fast, and there will be plenty of time to get the house as you want it later on now. For now, I'd prioritise the kids, yourself and your marriage in that order.

You’re in the trenches right now and both of you working ft with young children is fucking hard.

mine are 4 and 6 and both DH and I work full time. I get it.

I would say now probably isn’t the time to be ‘aggressively saving’ if you can you need to outsource something and in your examples I think having a cleaner would help you immensely.

re laundry tumble drier. Initial outlay but no more ironing. Hang it up as soon as dry. They aren’t that expensive to run. Peg washing out the night before if you know it will be dry overnight.

re the commute how far apart are all these things? Having one car is tricky. Can you and DH take it in turns to do school/nursery run and the other starts earlier and therefore finishes earlier for pick up? Getting my youngest into the school nursery with my eldest was a game changer for us.

I try and not leave a room empty handed to put things away. Slow cooker meals. Clear designated jobs with DH on evening after kids are down.

how much renovations do you need? Can you manage for a couple of years without renovations?

it’s bloody hard work!

Do you have childcare on the Monday? That would be the other thing. Can you get childcare on the Monday freeing your time a little?

I actually don’t think compressed hours work at all.

Kallax storage from Ikea do kids shit too. I think we have about 8 units dotted around our house. Everything gets lobbed in and the box shut. No idea where parts of stuff are but every now and then I sort it out. But it means I don’t have to look at it at 9pm at night

I think doing compressed hours with one in nursery and one at school sounds absolutely brutal. Most of us don't have that, and/or pay for a cleaner, and/or don't have the elderly dog needing meds, and/or can at least leave our work in the office at 5.30.

My advice is that one weekend you book a Friday night at a hotel by yourself. Take 24h of quiet to reset. Go back home for teatime Sat. Then when you can, after bedtime one night, sit down with DH and talk through what the priorities are and what levers you've got. You've got to look after yourself, you're more use to everyone else when you are operating at full function. I don't think you are missing any magic tricks - stockpiling birthday card and stamps or batch cooking are not going to unlock hours of your life. But it's worth stepping back and re-evaluating together.

You know the thing of "in marriage it should be 50/50"? I've seen people riff on that by saying things to each other like "I've only got 20% today". Then if the partner has got 80 then they might take some jobs off the low person's that day. Or if they are also at 20, they get a takeaway/eat pasta and cheese, skip baths or whatever.

also. You are not useless!!!

A second car to divide and conquer but also you say your employer is flexible but you seem to be doing 5 days work in 4 so I don’t know that your work situation is great- you shouldn’t have to log back on.

Ps your kids are very young so it will get easier but make sure you and dh carve out a movie night at least or something that means you don’t forget each other (where we are)

Been there! 3 under 6 at one point and full-time in city both of us, no family around. Firstly, sympathy. And secondly, hang in there, it gets easier when theyre all at school full-time. Thirdly, you're not useless, you're overwhelmed. It's understandable.

Could either of you negotiate working from home one day a week? That is helpful as you can put a few washes on, and a bit of tidying in between meetings (instead of going out for lunch/coffee breaks before anyone jumps on me). You can also start yiur evening a bit earlier without the commute.

My suggestions would be to…

consider working five shorter days rather than 4 longer ones, being out 7-7 while you have young children is tough.

Or save less aggressively and get a cleaner. A demanding full-time job, young children, planning renovations. It’s a lot.

Work - do you really need to be working in the evening, or is it just a cultural expectation or habit? Are you as efficient as you can be at work? I don’t mean that to be insulting, but if there’s always working hanging over you and you’re feeling frazzled can you review how you approach your responsibilities? I have a demanding senior job and felt I was drowning at work, but I’ve put a lot of effort (with some AI help) to reviewing how I tackle some pieces of work and I’m finding new ways to streamline tasks all the time.